False Starts and Expectations

The past few days have been filled with heightened expectations and dashed hopes. I took a 2 week temporary job as an Administrative Assistant for an International Oil and Gas company. That in itself was a little funny to me given that I ended up back in Newfoundland in part because of a bogus job offer with an Oil and Gas Company in Calgary. This was, I guess, a way of healing my perceptions about the industry. And that it did. I was blessed with the company of some really sweet and wonderful people from different parts of the globe. It showed me how easily my intentions to connect globally could happen...and in a way that I didn't plan on. It also showed me that all my ideals about living a 'spiritual life' manifest in any circumstance where I let go of my own filters of how it supposed to look. I've often heard that transformation occurs from the inside out and that the place where you are most likely to see such spiritual growth is in the very places where you think they aren't present. My dear mentor, Moreah Ragusa, had told me once that "the last thing the world needs is more spiritual gurus. The world needs more people who are spiritually present in normal everyday circumstance". This is certainly ringing true to me now as I embrace my quest for normal, everyday, practical and conscious living.

I was given the opportunity to interview for a permanent position with this Oil and Gas company and initially I hesitated, thinking about all the ways that this position might fit with my goals and how it supported the picture I had created in my own mind. Without realizing it, I had boxed myself into an idealistic picture of how my opportunities are supposed to come to me. Instead of embracing it, I allowed my ego to interfere and essentially sabotage it. Only after the fact did I realize how much I did want this position and because of my inability to commit and take a chance, I had sent the opportunity packing. In hindsight, I saw the value in giving a committment in exchange for being given the stability and support that is needed. It's funny how sometimes you don't realize how much you do want something until you lose the chance to have it.

So, on the same day that I have this realization of how I am incapable of functioning if I continue to allow my ego to set me up in expectations is the same day St. John's is hit with a big blizzard. Everything halted to a near stand still. I found myself sitting in my living room looking out through the window to see the trees behind the house becoming laden with snow. It looked so majestic, peaceful and far removed from time or circumstance. I thought about it and saw that I need to be like that tree...unaffected by circumstance and holding true to who I am regardless of the 'weather' around me. It told me that no matter what things look like on the outside, it's the inside core of what IS that really matters. Perhaps if I had been able to receive the offer for interviewing for a position with this company and gave a willingness to commit to them as I commit to myself, then perhaps my day would have turned out differently.